About a week after I moved into the new house that I’m renting, I found a large safe in the closet under the basement stairs. This was the first time I had opened that door, and there it sat a large cast iron safe that had clearly been there a while considering the rust it had accumulated. I wondered what could be inside. I tried the handle, but it wouldn’t budge; locked shut.
I texted my cousin Jake, a locksmith, a picture of it asking if he could crack it. “Be there in 10” he texted back.
Jake made quick work of the safe. The door opened to reveal another slightly smaller safe inside. “Ah its one of those. I bet you there is another safe inside of this one, and maybe even another one inside that. The only reason to do that is if you got something that’s worth a lot. Its probably empty but if we find anything valuable your cutting me in on it right?”
“Fair enough” I replied and he got to work on the second safe, struggling a little more with this one than the last. Within a couple minutes he had cracked it open, revealing another safe inside. “What the it’s.. it’s welded shut” Jake said, looking at the safe intently.
“Well, can you get inside of it?” I asked
“Brute forcing a safe isn’t really my thing unfortunately. If I had the right tools and equipment I could get inside of it. But I’d probably just end up destroying whatever’s in it. Well… unless its another safe, you know? But I reckon whoever owned this safe didn’t want anyone ever seeing its contents again. Not even himself.”
“Well thanks anyways Jake. Wanna stick around and have a beer?”
“Nah I should probably get going. But I’ll take you up on it next time”
After that I didn’t really think about the safe. I tried putting my cat, Milo’s, litter box in that closet but that didn’t last long. He refused to use the litter box while it was in there, or anywhere else in the basement for that matter. I found it strange. I’ve had Milo for 12 years now and he has never had a problem using the litter box before. But once I moved the litter box back upstairs he started to use it again.
A couple of months later I was doing laundry in the basement, when I noticed that the closet door was cracked open. Strange… I could have sworn I left it closed. I walked over to it and went to push it closed, but I could feel something heavy behind the door. I cracked it open, and looking down I saw a thick metal rectangle. It was the door to the innermost safe. It had deep scratches in the metal and was bent. It looked like it had been torn from the safe. I peeked inside of the safe. It was empty, but also had deep scratches and dents in the metal. I called Jake. “Hey Jake. Were you over here at all trying to open that safe?”
“Umm no why?”
“Well I’m down here in my basement and the safe is open, the door is completely ripped off of it.” Jake was silent for a moment before responding
“It sounds like you got robbed. Is any of your stuff missing?”
“Not that I’ve noticed, but I guess I should go around and check. It’s weird man… There are scratches all over the inside of the safe.”
“Scratches? Maybe from whatever tools they used to open it. Send me a picture.” I quickly snapped a picture, sent it over to Jake, and then went around my house looking to see if anything was missing. After spending about 10 minutes I was pretty confident that nothing was missing. I checked my phone and saw that Jake had texted me back.
“No tool did that. Looks like some sicko locked an animal inside of it at some point. Maybe a dog? That’s terrible”
I texted him back
“Nothings missing but that is definitely disturbing. They must have only been after whatever was in the safe. I think I’m going go file a police report anyways.”
“Good idea” he replied. I opened my front door and went to slide on my shoes, but my left shoe wasn’t there. I stood looking around for it for a moment, but it was nowhere to be found. Just then Milo bolted out the front door. “What the?” he has never run off like that before.
It took me 2 hours of looking around my neighborhood in one shoe before I found Milo. I was too tired to go out and file a police report by the time we got back. Milo was acting strange when we got back home too. He was very jumpy and unlike himself. Milo started following me around the house and started sleeping in the bed with me too. Maybe I need to take him to the vet soon. He is starting to get older…
Other strange things started happening around the house too. Doors would be open that I could have sworn I had closed. I started hearing weird sounds around the house at night. Random stuff would go missing, like the book I was reading, the scale in my bathroom, and my toothbrush. I brushed it off as me just being forgetful and misplacing things. It didn’t bother me too much. Until one day I woke up and my front door was wide open. I knew I had shut and locked it, I have always made sure to lock it at night. Just then Milo tried to run out again, luckily I closed the door before he could. That’s when I started to get freaked out. After Milo settled down, I left the house that day I just needed to get out of there. I felt like my head was spinning.
I sat at a coffee shop for a few hours feeling like I was going crazy. I really didn’t want to go back home but I figured I should go back to see if anything was missing and report it to the police afterwards.
When I got back home, my jaw dropped. My front door was wide open, I went inside and shut the door and immediately saw that a mirror had been shattered and the place was trashed. I decided that I needed to take Milo and get out of this house now. So, I searched every room but there was no sign of him… until I got to the basement steps. My heart sank when I saw a trail of blood leading into the basement, I followed it knowing it would lead to the safe. And inside it there was what was left of Milo along with all of my missing things. I only knew it was him because there were orange clumps of hair among the gore. I puked as I ran out of the house.
I stayed in a hotel for the next couple of days. I was freaked out. I felt much better being out of that house, but I couldn’t get that image of what was left of Milo out of my head. I found an apartment, and hired movers to pack up all of my stuff. I didn’t want to set foot in that house ever again. I had a feeling that if I, did I would end up just like Milo. I started to get my stuff set up in my new apartment yesterday and it was already starting to feel like home. I was just so glad to be out of that house, until I woke up this morning to find the front door… wide… open…